"To seek for proof of geometrical propositions by an appeal to observation proves nothing in reality, except that the person who has recourse to such grounds has no due apprehension of the nature of geometrical demonstration. We have heard of persons who convince themselves by measurement that the geometrical rule respecting the squares on the sides of a right-angles triangle was true: but these were persons whose minds had been engrossed by practical habits, and in whom speculative development of the idea of space had been stifled by other employments."
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William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, (London, 1858), Part 1, Bk. 2, chap. 1, sect. 4. Reported in Moritz (1914)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid%E2%80%99s_Elements
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Euclid’s Elements
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